The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for making coatings and articles from various material compositions involving use of electrostatic spray as the core method of coating deposition. These coatings may be used for a variety of applications, including as examples: abrasion-resistant coatings for cutting tools and wear parts, solid lubricant coatings for tools and wear parts, bio-friendly or biocidal coatings for biomedical implants, and thin film coatings for microelectronics, among others. Using the processes and equipment designs described in the detailed description section hereof, coatings may be applied to many different substrate materials and parts having simple or complex 3-dimensional geometries.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,607,782 issued Aug. 19, 2003 to Ajay P. Malshe, et al., disclosed a method that uses electrostatic spray coating (ESC) to deposit a base layer or preform on a substrate, followed by chemical vapor infiltration (CVI) to introduce a binder phase that creates a composite coating with good adherence of the binder to the initial phase particles and adherence of the composite coating to the substrate.